Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)

Hot Blue stars shine brightly in
this beautiful, recently formed galactic or "open" star cluster.
Open cluster NGC
3293 is located in the constellation
Carina,
lies at a distance of about
8000 light years, and has a particularly high abundance of these young
bright stars.

Is this one galaxy or two? Analysis of Arp 230 has shown evidence that this seemingly
single
spiral galaxy is actually the result of the
recent
collision
of two spiral galaxies. The
slow motion collision took place over about 100
million years and induced a burst of
star formation that has begun to
subside.

In the central part of the
Lagoon Nebula lies the above pictured
Hourglass
Nebula.
In this region of recent star formation, obscuring
dark lanes of dust permeate the red-glowing hydrogen gas. Blocking
some...

Ribbons of red-glowing
gas and dark
dust surround massive young stars in
this close-up of the
Lagoon Nebula
taken by the
Hubble Space Telescope. The
Lagoon
Nebula is relatively close and bright - it appears larger than the
Full Moon and is visible even without a
telescope.

Welcome to Planet
Earth, the third planet from a
star named the
Sun. The
Earth is shaped like a
sphere and
composed mostly of rock.
Over 70 percent of the
Earth's surface is
water.
The planet has a relatively thin
atmosphere
composed mostly of
nitrogen and
oxygen.

The famous Martian meteorite pictured above houses
microscopic structures interpreted by many as
fossils of ancient Martian life.
How do you find a
meteorite
from Mars here on
Earth?
On a typical day, several large rocks fall
to Earth from space, usually winding up in the oceans.

The nebula cataloged as NGC 604 is a giant star forming region,
1500 light years across, in the nearby
spiral galaxy, M33.
Seen here in a snapshot by the Hubble Space Telescope,
over 200 newly formed,
hot, massive, stars are scattered within a cavern-like, gaseous,
interstellar cloud.

Io's surface is active.
Geyser-like eruptions from volcanoes on this Jovian moon were seen by
both Voyager spacecraft in 1979 and were also spotted this year in
late June by Galileo's camera from a distance of about 600,000 miles.

Details of the crazed cracks criss-crossing
Europa's frozen surface are apparent in this mosaic of
the Galileo spacecraft's latest images of Jupiter's ice-covered moon.
Curious white stripes, also seen by Voyager,
are clearly visible
marking the center of the wide dark fractures.